This thread has people voting for “life without parole” instead of the death penalty for killers.
Now let’s say a serial rapist and/or pedophile is sentenced for his 45 sexual assaults. None of his victims were killed. Indeed, the serial killer/pedophile never even attempted to kill anyone. But DNA evidence and his victims’ testimonies have been used to sentence him.
If he is sentenced to life without parole, he is getting the same sentence as a killer, which is not fair. If he is sentenced to life with parole and doesn’t ever get paroled, he is getting the same sentence as a killer, which is not fair. If he is sentenced to life with parole and gets paroled, there is a good chance he will commit more sexual assaults.
If you think this case is hypothetical, read about the case of Seattle’s Kevin Coe.
My question, too. The ripple effect of even one molestation or sexual assault is pretty devastating (as evidenced in Intervention and in many posts on this board), both on the victim and their loved ones. I don’t like the assumption that a sexual assault victim is ‘ruined forever,’ but it’s not uncommon for them to feel that way, or to wish they’d been killed instead of being left to live in pain.
It’s a rather rare occurrence. I imagine that it’s not quite as easily controlled by hormones in the case of a woman. Generally the accepted wisdom around NYC parks is that male predators want to have sex with the children, whereas female predators want to kidnap the child to raise as their own. The truth of this I don’t know. It’s just rare that you hear about women being serial rapists.
For me, I don’t care that much about ‘punishment’ per se, but Castration would certainly reduce the impetus to rape for men.
Seriously, though, unless we decide to adopt extraordinary measures such as torture, here in the U.S. we’ve only got two ways to punish non-murdering criminals: imprisonment, and fines. Life without parole is the upper limit of what we’ve got at the moment. Incidentally, just last month a habitual child molester hereabouts was sentenced to 40 consecutive life sentences. He’ll be eligible for parole in about 1,230 years.
(I’m omitting treason and espionage on purpose, by the way; I’m aware they’re non-murder offenses for which the death penalty is permitted. Likewise, I’m ignoring the chance that you want this hypothetical guy on probation.)
So sentences should have a 1-1 correspondence with crimes? Each unique type of crime deserves a unique sentence? That’s what I’m getting out of your assertion that “it’s not fair to give a serial rapist/pedophile the same sentence as a murderer.” Is this seriously what you’re advocating?
This would turn the entire legal system on its ear. There are only a handful of punishment ranges defined in most states and in the Federal system. That’s why we have the levels of crime, misdemeanor, and felony. Even within those classifications there are groups of types of crimes which all carry similar punishments. Check out this chart from a Texas legal defense firm and you’ll see there are numerous individual crimes which all share the same or similar sentences. An individual can be sentenced to exactly the same fines/jail time for any of the following Class B Misdemeanor crimes in Texas.
Why should someone who enticed a child get the same sentence as someone who prank calls 911? Because spelling out every possible crime and a “fitting punishment” for it would be impossible. People are extremely creative on how they commit crimes. Unlike the SDMB, which can have vague catch-all rules, the legal system MUST spell out as much as possible so citizens know what they are expected to abide by and the penalties their representatives assign to each of those laws if broken. To do otherwise is to move us away from being a nation of laws and more towards a nation of men, subject to passions of the moment. It’s not perfect, by any means, but to arrange a hierarchy of crimes and a corresponding hierarchy of matching offenses, with no repeats allowed, would be virtually impossible. It would occupy every second of every legislative session and would constantly need reform.
I think he’s pointing out that murder is the worst crime that you can commit, and even though rape’s pretty bad, its not as bad as murder, so the sentence should be less than murder.
I don’t like the implication that rape is as bad as murder. It’s not. Rape is a brutal assault, which is bad enough without all of this nonsense about “you’ll wish you were dead instead of living with all of this emotional pain”.
Rape crimes should be treated like any other crime. There’s a particularly high recidivism rate for sex crimes (if I understand correctly) which means that parole should be harder to get. I have no problem with that, but can we please stop trying to convince rape victims that they’re damaged goods?
Mosier, I must confess, I never bought the whole “rape is about power”. I always thought it was about sex, pure and simple, and I always felt that lying about it stopped it bein tackled as an issue.
How about: “Rape” is an awfully big word used in a lot of disparate situations, and they have different motivations. There’s just no logical reason to think that a 21 year old teacher sleeping with a 17 year old student, a drunken person at a party, a mentally ill rapist in Central Park and a soldier raping a villager have the same motivations at all.
I would suggest that few things are absolute. There are probably a myriad of reasons to rape. I’m sure being hard up is a reason. Soldiers in the middle ages raped all the time, I doubt it was universally about sexual dominance. They probably wanted to fuck and took the opportunity, regardless of what the locals thought.
Giving an all encompassing reason for rape is like giving an all encompassing reason for murder in my opinion.
Indeed they are. And that is why we have permissible sentence ranges for every offense grade. Take, for example, a crime like Robbery, which in Texas is a second degree felony. All second degree felonies carry the same sentence range: a term in prison of not less than 2 nor more than 20 years, plus a possible fine of up to $10,000. Now, there’s a huge difference between spending two years in prison, and spending 20 years there. That range is given to allow leeway so that the sentence given is proportional to the circumstances of the offense. Even with the single example of Robbery, I’m sure we can all imagine a robbery that might deserve the minimum of 2 years (say, a 17 year old guy runs into a 7-11 with a whiffle bat, grabs the money from the register, and sprints out again), and I’m sure we can imagine robberies that deserve 20 years (say, a 28 year old meth head terrorizes the clerk for an hour before finally leaving with the money). So, two offenses, even though the specific crime and offense grade is the same, may deserve two very different punishments. Which is why, generally, punishment (in my state at least) is set by a jury unless the defendant specifically and in writing elects to have the judge set punishment. And potential jurors are thoroughly grilled about whether they can consider the full range of punishment before they’re seated on a jury.
Anyway, I got really off track up there. My point was, even though some very different crimes are at the same offense grade level, that doesn’t mean that the punishments for those crimes will be “the same”. “Enticing a child”, by the way, means that an adult either attempts to lure or actually removes a child younger than 18 from the lawful custody of the child’s parent. If there’s a showing that the enticement was done with intent to commit a felony against the child, the enticement alone is a third degree felony, 2 to 10 years in prison. Being that the “enticing a child” statute is right between “interference with child custody”, “agreement to abduct from custody”, and “criminal nonsupport” in the Penal Code, I’m inclined to believe that the primary aim of the “enticing” law is as a tool primary managing conservators (meaning, the parent with full custody) can use if necessary to prevent the non-custodial parent from taking off with the kid. It gives you more options: sure, you might be able to file kidnapping charges, but then the non-custodial parent goes to jail for a long stretch, and without a job he can’t pay child support, which ultimately means the kid suffers through no fault of his own. Instead, you can proceed with the class B, have him on misdemeanor probation, and he’ll keep on working and supporting his child while at the same time under the thumb of the probation office. That could be a better situation, depending on the circumstances.
Murder is not the worst crime one can commit. Multiple murder is worse. Genocide is worse than multiple murder. Extinguishing the entire human race would be worse than single-race/culture genocide. Extinguishing all life on Earth would be worse than just wiping out the humans. So if life without parole is the worst possible punishment, then it should be reserved for people who wipe out every living thing on the planet. Life with parole would go to those who just extinguish all of humanity. Life with parole and time off for good behavior for those who wipe out the Jews/Chinese/Indians/etc. Something less for multiple murder, heck at this rate I’m not sure it’s justifiable to give a life sentence to mere murderers at all!